Athletics Over Academics: East’s Instagram rebrand focuses too much on sports, disregarding other clubs and organizations

I’ll say it, I unfollowed East’s Instagram account. 

After its rebrand to @smeastlancers and a refocus on sports content like game day posts and highlights, the account has turned into more of a sports hype page than the account students originally followed for construction updates around the parking lots or to check the shortened schedule for the week.

This overwhelming focus on sports content not only affects Instagram followers who see the spam in their feed, but it also disregards other academic and extracurricular achievements. 

As of Oct. 26, 11 consecutive posts over a span of four days have been sports-related game day reminders and good luck posts for competing athletes — which is great. But while these posts support athletes, they become spam-like, and are rarely interrupted by a volunteer opportunity or a happy holidays post — no mention of non-sports related activities at our school.

Last year, math teacher Christopher Burrow’s Calculus BC class broke the national average for most 5s on their AP exam and broke multiple school and district-wide records for the test. Nobody knew about it. 

This year, five East seniors qualified as National Merit Semifinalists, an extremely competitive and prestigious scholarship that only 50,000 out of the 1.5 million PSAT testers are recognized for. Our marching band just placed third in their division. There was no mention of these accomplishments on the school account. But at least the student body knows about the JV football game happening tonight, right?

It’s great that C teams and JV teams are now recognized as frequently as varsity teams. However, an entire Instagram page dedicated to sports overshadows students who participate in other extracurriculars or challenging academic commitments — as their achievements aren’t being recognized by their school’s administration. 

It creates an overall ambivalent environment even offline during the school day, when an administrator high fives a varsity athlete during their offseason, oblivious to the National Merit Semifinalist or kid who scored all 5s on their AP exams last year.

We should appreciate all forms of success without shoving academics, volunteer work and club participants to the side.